Episode Transcript

Michael Abernathy 0:10
What’s up? What’s up? What’s up, everybody? Welcome to the five minute rants. I’m your host, Michael Abernathy, and welcome to the podcast dedicated on the journey of life and business. I’ve got a special guest with me, Kevin Paul Scott. What’s up, Kevin?

Kevin Paul Scott 0:25
Hey, good to be with you, Michael.

Michael Abernathy 0:26
Thanks for coming back, man. Really appreciate it. Thanks for sticking around for Episode Two. Well, real quick. We were talking about well you were talking about how healthy things grow. And things that grow change. Can you unpack that for us?

Kevin Paul Scott 0:42
Yeah. Well, first of all, everybody in life wants growth. Like we want growth in our business. We want growth personally or professionally. So we all want things that grow. The fact is that things that grow, are changing. Like that happens. And very few of us like, even if we like change in general, we don’t like the things that we like changing. And if you don’t mind, I’d love to just kind of tell you where this idea really came to life for me. So we talked in the last episode about leadership books a number of years ago, I asked, tell me a great leadership book to read. And they said, Here’s What I do. Go to the book of Proverbs. And whatever day of the month it is. read that chapter of the Book of Proverbs. So if it’s a month, read Proverbs 15. I tried it. Some of it was great, Michael, I’m just being real with you and some was like, Okay, this does not make any sense to me. One of them that didn’t make sense was proverbs 14.4. It says this, it says where there are there were there are no oxen, the manger is plain. But abundant crops come by the strength of the odds and I know, I’ve just lost half the people right here because they’re like, What is he talking about? That’s how I felt when I read it. Like, we’re there. Uh, What is this even me? This is not like this is a foreign language to me. Okay, y’all, I grew up in the suburbs of Metro Atlanta. But my wife is from the middle of nowhere in South Georgia. And I’ve been with and now I began to understand this harm. So for all my suburbs and city people, let me do a little translation for you. This proverb is illustrating a principle it basically says it paints a picture of two farms, the first farm there is no animals. So the manger stable or the barn is clean. Yeah, Here’s the translation. No animals, no crap. But that’s What it says, But on the other farm, it says abundance crops are coming by the strength of the ox. It’s saying on this farm, there’s abundance, there’s growth, there’s progress, and it’s happening, because there’s some animals there to do the work. Here’s What it doesn’t say. But it implies on that farm, somebody’s got to grab a shovel.

On the surface, this one farm is more appealing, like no animals, no crap, except that farm isn’t doing What it was created to do. Here’s the principle that we’ve got to understand.

A lot of times when things are growing, and they’re improving in our life, there’s side effects of that. And we call those side effects crap. You may call other things, but They’re like, Yeah, my day looks like I’m shoveling crap all day. And if every day we wake up thinking about the just the growth, or the things that are the the change that we don’t like, we’re gonna have a bad attitude. But if we view that change as a side effect of progress, it changes everything in our life. If every day I grab a shovel, I say, Man, this is a side effect, because there’s an animal here that’s doing this work that this is a side effect of growth. And by the way, have you spent time on a farm Michael?

Michael Abernathy 3:48
I have. I sure have.

Kevin Paul Scott 3:49
Okay, so you understood this, I learned this that crap in one season, they use that

Michael Abernathy 3:57
They should do.

Kevin Paul Scott 3:58
They use it as fertilizer next season, which means the crap that I’m dealing with now might just be a catalyst for growth in the future. Here’s the principle. The principle is that we’ve got to learn to view the change as a side effect of growth instead of a problem in our life. And if we’ll do that, I love this idea of perspective, how we view things changes how we do things. And so view the Change View the side effect in the proper perspective, and it will fuel our growth instead of being a distraction from it.

Michael Abernathy 4:33
That’s a really good that’s really good. You say that in one of the things that I believe a lot is that everything in life happens for you and nothing happens to you.

Kevin Paul Scott 4:47
Yeah.

Michael Abernathy 4:48
Just to say differently. I think that’s really good man. I think so let me ask you this real quick as we wrap up, you have 15 seconds. Why is this so important?

Kevin Paul Scott 4:59
It’s so important because if if we don’t have the right perspective, all of our interactions are soured our motivations get sidetracked, but if we keep our eye on the prize will endure the craft to get to the goal. So we’ve got to stay focused on What it truly is.

Michael Abernathy 5:16
That’s so good. That’s so good. Well, everybody, that’s a wrap. We got a piece out we’re out of time. And so we’ll catch y’all later.